


The Truth Can Be Made Up If You Only Know How

by georgiamagnolia



Category: Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: F/M, Mild Het, maybe pre-slash, possible angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-10
Updated: 2011-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 05:32:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/georgiamagnolia/pseuds/georgiamagnolia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Napoleon turns contemplative after a mission, but why is he thinking of Illya while entertaining a young lady?</p><p>((originally posted elsewhere February 2K11))</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Truth Can Be Made Up If You Only Know How

Every time is like the first time because it usually is. Sadly, it’s often the last as well. This is not a life that lends itself easily to commitments or long term plans and so I make neither. I have been called shallow and callous and am described even by friends as a player, enjoying the field and all the varied delights on offer.

I suppose a charitable description would be that I am a serial monogamist but that is not really correct as that still implies an untruth. I do not make promises I know I cannot keep; I have no illusions about the tenuous nature of life itself. I am too familiar with how swiftly circumstances can shift and the thread that anchors us to this existence can be severed. Better to not have outstanding obligations that I might not return to fulfill.

If I am monogamous at all it is only to my other half, my partner. For him I will drop everything, including a beautiful woman, to report for duty or to search some far flung nowhere to save a mission or rescue the innocent or any of a long list of expectations my employer has of me. More importantly, expectations my partner has of me, these are the commitments that I make.

A doctor of dubious pedigree told me once that my behaviour stems either from a deep seated hatred of women or from a hatred of something buried so deeply within myself that I will never have a chance of understanding it.

That doctor then proceeded to wire me to several machines of questionable use. His torture of me hadn’t really started in earnest yet when my partner broke down the door and fired a sleep dart into the doctor’s neck.

After we cleared Medical and our paperwork, Illya hied himself off to labs unknown to study the confiscated life’s work of the weasel we had trapped. What he might or might not have learned about that doctor’s theories about me, he has never said. What I learned about myself, that came later when I was taking Janie out for dinner and dancing.

She was beautiful. A teller at the bank I had been sent to in order to track the money THRUSH was funneling into the doctor’s research. Dinner was a payment for secrets kept. I charmed her in all my usual ways, no less sincere for the practice I put into it. She was a delightful young woman, clever and quick to understand things. She had warm hazel eyes and hair somewhere between brown and red, like cinnamon with a sugarcoated shimmer to it, generous curves where they belonged and a throaty laugh that she demonstrated frequently. She was also from a family of several older brothers so she took no nonsense from anyone. She was a woman who knew how to get her way when she needed it.

We had a wonderful evening and when I escorted her home she invited me in for drinks and I wasn’t inclined to say no. This was an inclination she mirrored to me in the small ways a woman will; touching my arm, laughing at my jokes, keeping eye contact just a second longer than was strictly necessary. When she left an opening, I took it. And even as I was kissing her warm smiling mouth, I wondered how on Earth I could hate such a giving creature. How could I hate the silk feel of her smooth palms on my chest, her lips exploring my throat with kisses and pliant willingness she gave so generously. I could not. I could not hate the taste of her on my mouth, the way she clung to me as I kissed the breath from her lungs. I could not hate the sigh she made as my hands stroked her skin and opened her as the sun opens the blossoms in Spring.

But I could hate the transience of this life I have chosen. I could hate the need to keep a distance from others for their own protection. I could hate the world that created a need for men like me, men who go and do and clean up after the greed and cruelty and selfishness of those who would subjugate the free.

And as I still played her like an exquisite instrument and she sighed and cried out and came for me, I wondered how I kept at it, kept reporting for duty even when that duty was so often distasteful. And I recognized that it was not always difficult and ugly and dark. My partner and I, we made the world better than that greed and selfishness, we redeemed the world if only in small ways by denying the cruelties where we could.

My thoughts turned to Illya even as I soothed Janie afterwards, stroking her soft hair and gentling her as she caught her breath at last and gave me a brilliant and sated smile. I wondered if he had listened to the recordings that were made of the doctor’s questions, if he had been listening to my recorded answers even as I was entertaining my _fille du jour_. Would he credit the responses I made to the drugs I had been dosed with? Would he dismiss them as pure fabrication, as so often the answers we gave under duress were? Would he take into account the fact that I was entertaining this young lady for a few hours and leap to all the usual conclusions? I thought not. My partner is nothing if not astute. He would apply that clever mind of his and read between my answers to the truth underlying.

I kissed Janie goodnight just inside her door, a surprisingly chaste kiss for all the familiarity of our earlier activities. Then I slipped out the door into the midnight darkness, waiting to hear the deadbolt slide home after she closed the door. I wondered what exactly would be waiting for me in the hotel room Illya and I were sharing on this mission. Would I find Illya already in pajamas, reading a journal or the newspaper or one of his endless supply of books or would it be an empty room, vacated by someone who found out more than he wished to know. Would it be someone closed off and separated from me that I found, or would it be my partner waiting for me, waiting as he did so often, with amusement and mock disapproval that we both knew was a ruse.

I hoped that it would be my partner that I found upon my return, my other half, the one that made me better than I was alone, the one I always returned to, always wanted to return to… I hated the not knowing.


End file.
